Internet Marketing, SEO, E-Commerce and Social Media

We’ve talked here before about blogging being the best SEO method/tactic; well Inbound Marketing is the best SEO strategy. Inbound Marketing a strategy that uses content (blogging), email, and social media to get found on the internet and convert those visitors into leads and customers. This is done through: 1) content, 2) distribution and 3) engagement.

In the old days, SEO was more about technical SEO, such as: on page scripting, link building, SEO programming, competitor audits, pages created to rank for a particular keyword, etc. In the past, if you had enough quality back links, you could forgo quality content.

Today, rather than measuring how well you rank on Google or other search engines, you’re better off measuring how many keywords you rank for. MarketingTech Blog recently found that 72% of their search traffic came from keywords where they ranked lower than the first page. It used to be that people didn’t look further than the first page of search results, but apparently they are now.

One of our fellow HubSpot Partners, KunoCreative, has shown how they grew by switching to Inbound Marketing. They have data over a 26 month period (13 traditional SEO, 13 Inbound Marketing). By using Inbound Marketing, they:

Increased Organic Traffic 450%

Increased #Keywords Driving Organic Traffic 556%

Increased # of Organic Leads 633%

We’ll talk more next time about how and why this happened and how you can make it happen for you.

Joe B. loves the analogy of the fishing trotline to explain the benefits of blogging for business:

Well, you have to look at your website like a trotline in fishing. Every page on your website, or post on your blog, is a hook on a trotline. And every one of those pages (hooks) has different bait (keywords). So every one of your blog posts gives you a new opportunity to be found in the results of a search in a search engine. The more blog posts, the more opportunities.

Let’s say you and your biggest competitor have websites with an equal number of pages (it could be 10 or 100 pages, it doesn’t matter). Now, let’s say you have been blogging between 1 and 5 days a week for the last 2 years. That would give you between 104 and 520 additional indexed pages which could appear in search results when people are looking for your products or services!

If you aren’t blogging, you should be. And if you blog enough before your competitors start blogging, you will have a big head start on the number of indexed pages you have.

This is not rocket science, it’s basic math. So, start blogging!

He has a good point there. However, many people in business may not know how to get started. Join me next Wedensday, August 15th for the Blogging for Business 101 webinar and I’ll show you how to get started and do it right to start getting traffic and leads for your business. Click on the button below to register. The webinar is free of charge.

So, why aren’t you blogging? For many businesses, the bottom line is fear. Fear of not having enough time, ideas, and/or skills. Blogging is actually like anything else, the more you do it, the better you get at it. However, you may need a little help in getting started.

Join me for the Blogging for Business 101 webinar on
August 15th
2 p.m. Central Time
You will learn:

Best practices for setting up your blog

What types of content you can create

How to come up with blog topics that will reach your target market

Time saving tips and tricks

How to use keywords effectively

This webinar will give you a plan for your blogging that will help you get found by people who need you, convert traffic into leads and customers; and we will also go over what you need to analyze to keep you on track.

It’s easy to see why blogging is the best SEO method. SEO or search engine optimization is all about getting found by the search engines. Search engines use two main criteria for returning search results (there are others, but these are important): 1) relevancy and 2) authority.

For relevancy, search engines try to match up search terms with terms on a website. To determine authority, search engines use the number of inbound links from other relevant websites. Blogging can improve both your website’s relevance and authority.

Every blog post is a page added to your website. With each blog post you can concentrate on a particular keyword or keyword phrase. More blog posts mean more opportunities to be relevant for more search terms. Each blog post is also link bait, meaning it gives you an opportunity to get another inbound link thus giving your site more authority.

In addition to relevancy and authority, search engines also reward freshness. And blogging gives you the opportunity to keep your site fresh with new information and new blog posts.

So you see with blogging, SEO is really a matter of arithmetic, specifically addition. By adding more posts (pages) to your website, you are adding more opportunities to get found and be linked to.

Don’t forget to register for the upcoming Blogging for Business 101 webinar coming up on August 15th at 2 p.m. central time.

This webinar will give you a plan for your blogging that will help you get found by people who need you, convert traffic into leads and customers and we will also go over what you need to analyze to keep you on track. You can sign up for the Blogging for Business 101 webinar here:

As I mentioned in the Inbound Marketing 101 webinar, blogs can be a very powerful tool in your internet marketing. Remember, studies have shown that companies that blog get 55% more traffic and convert 40% more of that traffic into leads. That is pretty incredible. Search engines love blogs and so do people.

If you missed the webinar, you can still get the recording of it. Actually, there was a slight technical problem with the recording so we are re-recording it this morning and will send out the link to it today. Since we discussed what a powerful tool blogging can be, we thought it would be a good idea to have blogging for business be the focus of the next webinar that is coming up on August 15th at 2 p.m. central time. Registration for that will begin tomorrow.

In preparation for the blogging webinar, you might want to go ahead and do some keyword research. Here is the link to the free Google keyword tool that I mentioned: www.googlekeywordtool.com/. Try it out and see what people are searching for to find you and then come to the webinar to see how to use those keywords effectively.

I have enjoyed watching the Olympics this past weekend. It is fun to see sports that you otherwise don’t really see much. One of those is the synchronized diving. I liked what one of the commentators said as the American divers were taking their last dive. She said, “What do you do when the pressure is on? You make your last dive your best dive.” I think that is true in business as well, we need to make every interaction with our customers and potential customers our very best.

It is never too late to start filling your sales funnel with lots of highly qualified leads that can become your customers by leveraging the power of Inbound Marketing. If you aren’t focused on using the internet properly, you’re missing valuable opportunities to get more business.

Join me this Wednesday, August 1st at 2 p.m. central time as I show you the steps you need to take to make your web presence a marketing machine that delivers high quality, leads (potential customers) for your business.

Here is the agenda, give me 45 minutes and I’ll show you:

What the number one tool is to help your website get found online.

How to integrate social media in to your plan to get more leads.

How to get more visitors to your website to convert into high quality leads.

How to achieve measurable results in the most efficient and effective way.

And so much more . . .

Marketing has changed and if you are still marketing the way you did even 5 years ago, you are missing out on a ton of leads and customers that you could have for your business.

Register now, because this event will fill up fast.

And, don’t forget to share this webinar with your friends and colleagues so they can learn more about inbound marketing too!

PPC advertisers often send users to their homepage. This is usually a big mistake. Have you ever been searching for something specific, say a diamond ring, and click on a PPC ad only to be taken to the homepage of a jewelry store? Then you have to search the store’s website for diamond rings. Why didn’t the PPC ad take you to the jewelry store’s page with diamond ring? Probably because the person setting up the ad did not know better or was too lazy to set it up.

When setting up PPC campaigns, always try to link your ad to the page on your website that most closely matches what the user is looking for. Don’t frustrate the user by making her start her search all over on your website. It takes more time on your part, but is well worth the effort.

Clients often ask if they should use pay per click (PPC) advertising. And our answer always depends upon the client and her website.

We have all seen the studies that show some 70% of search engine users don’t click on PPC ads. So, why would someone use PPC ads? Well, that leaves 30% of search engine users who will click on PPC ads, and that is significantly more than 0%.

There are a few times when PPC advertising can be very effective:

a keyword phrase that is of vital importance, but so competitive it is impossible to get on the first page of search results.

a new website that hasn’t been around long enough to establish credibility in search engine rankings.

a website redesign where the original website had poor SEO and never established credibility in search engine rankings.

the introduction of a new product or service where the webpage is new and has yet to establish search engine credibility.

We all know that, if your website is not on the first two pages (higher in most cases) of search results, it is invisible to most searchers. So having a PPC ad, which 70% of the viewers will never click and only 30% may click, is far superior to being invisible.

PPC advertising can be an effective part of your internet marketing strategy. But use it judiciously, and don’t use it for terms where you already rank in the top 3 or 4 of search engine results.

Ever wonder why some businesses succeed at internet marketing and some don’t? To succeed at internet marketing, you must follow a process.

Set goals – decide where you want to be. If you have no destination, you won’t be able to devise a strategy to get anywhere. Setting goals is very important to successful internet marketing.

Define your target market – who is your target market? What needs are you meeting? What problems are you solving for them?

Now that you have goals and have defined your target market, you can devise a strategy to meet your goals. Successful internet marketing involves three steps:

Attract – Make sure your target market can find you online. Some of the strategies involved may be search engine optimization (SEO), social media, email marketing, mobile marketing, blogging, pay-per-click, etc. What is involved in the “attract” area will be determined by your goals and your target market.

Convert – Now that you have attracted your target market to your internet presence, it is time to convert them into leads and customers. This involves educating your visitors, implementing appropriate calls to action and landing pages. Again, what your specific strategy will involve is determined by your goals and your target market.

Analyze – How are your efforts paying off? Measure your visits, your conversion rates, your leads to customer rates. Are you reaching your goals? Do you need to make adjustments? If you aren’t measuring, you will have no way of knowing if you are successful or not. This is no time to guess about your success or to measure how you “feel” you are doing. Get the data and analyze it and make sure you are spending your time and money wisely.

Successful internet marketing isn’t magic, it isn’t something that just happens. It is something that takes planning and work.

Coming soon, we will be offering a series of free webinars focused on internet marketing/inbound marketing. Be looking for details coming this week!